Research project Environmental Governance Post Coronavirus Crisis
EPOC is a transdisciplinary research project that explores how future imaginaries are changing in the aftermath of the pandemic. Collaborating with societal partners and stakeholders, the research group explores the new fantasmatic orders that emerge and shape global environmental politics and governance in the post-coronavirus world.
The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a global health crisis. It is expected to lead to lasting changes in various policy areas – including health, mobility, trade, industry, finance, and sustainability. We are in a formative moment which we call the Coronavirus Crisis (CVC). Like any moment of shock and dislocation in history, the Coronavirus Crisis does and will make deep structural changes possible. This research project explores how global environmental governance is influenced by the Coronavirus Crisis and how it will be reimagined and rearranged in its aftermath. We focus on the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development of the UN (HLPF) and its efforts to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with special attention to the SDGs effect on the environment. During the EPOC project we map the changes in the practices, discourses, and imaginaries of global environmental governance following the Coronavirus Crisis. The chosen project approach is transdisciplinary, where key stakeholders are co-producers of the research. Not only do they provide input on priorities and conceptions, but also participate in writing policy recommendations. Together, we investigate the new priorities, synergies, and trade-offs in ecological sustainability; how recovery, improvement, and social transformation is (re)imagined; and what the ultimate future environmental goals should be in a post-Coronavirus Crisis global society.
Project members
Project managers
Aysem Mert
Senior lecturer, Associate professor
